The Sharkman, Thursday, February 28, Channel 5, 9pm.

Oh my gosh I'm so excited am I'm currently waiting for a channel 5 documentary to come on about a man that works along side great white sharks. Im abit of an animal fanatic so this is right up my street. The Sharkman is renowned worldwide for swimming with these predators without a cage. He was a former fisherman and is on a crusade to show that the huge fish are not bloodthirsty killers but are intelligent and sensitive creatures.
That was the most nerve racking documentary I have ever watched. Now I'll tell a little abit about it.
He swims with these sharks by mimicking their movements and is seen as neither prey or predator, so they happily glide past. It was absolutely amazing watching him swim calmly alongside these great sharks. He has a phenomenal ability to read sharks and doesn't jump straight in the water with any great white, instead he waits for the less agressive females to turn up.

His mission was to immobilize the great white through the process of tonic immobility, this is a natural state of paralysis induced in sharks by massaging their snouts, close to the eyes. The effects last for about 15 minutes. This was one of the best documentary programs I have watched, as It revealed that these mysterious and misunderstood creatures aren't just mind less man eaters and that they actually have a gentler side. This was evident when a female great white allowed Mike to catch a ride on her dorsal fin...wow! It hasn't quite persuaded me to willingly jump in the deep end with them but ill always want to cage dive.

More ideas for my identity.

Above I've put in a drawing of my idea of representing my shared identity in being a twin.

Above is a photo of my twin and I when we were around the age of one or two. I suppose this is also an important part of my life. In a way he's like my other half. So at the moment I'm thinking half an identity on myself and the other on my twin, I think this would be a interesting and different idea.


A great deal of my personal interest and identity in day to day life is to do with photography. Its something I love doing and I also feel dependent upon it as a form of comfort in the way it shows me a past memory. It is a quality that no other piece of technology or object can offer us, it has the unique ability to trigger past events that wold have been forgotten without this visual record.
I feel that my second self wouldn't be complete without photographs of my fond memories as these are the one thing I wouldn't change for anything in the world. I will go about narrowing down a few favorites that would work well with my indent.
More to come...

Cool colour accented photos I took.

I have a Canon IXUS 900 Ti, which has a brilliant setting where by I can take a photo and highlight one colour out of the frame. The rest of the colours are dulled down into a black and white theme. This is what I have used to take these photos above.

After looking at artists insight by Philip Straub about colour theory

More light and colour shots

After my recent attempt at taking a photo that screams of colour and light, I felt I needed to experiment further with different techniques so here are some of my more recent attempts. I really like the photos where I have focused on using only one colour, the colours quality is far clearer as it doesnt merge with the rest.

A few more examples of what kind of wings I would have.

I browsed the corbis website and found these rather beautiful images. Looking at the image above I think I would now consider being a child in the alternate life as there are far less impications and pressures. To me my memories are of pure joy and happiness, although it was a time when one is most vulnerable and naive it was also a time where our parents would do anything to proctect us from harms way.

My personal Identity.

What would I be in an alternative life? From a very young age I've always dreamed of being able to fly. At times when I have watch birds gliding gracefully through the blue sky I have wished I could have no worries and also fly away. However what use are feathers when we want to be accepted into society, so In this case I would prefer to take on a human form. I suppose I'd want to be similar to tinkabelle as I would have the abitlity to share my flying abilities with others just the same as in Peter Pan. Although these thoughts do appear very childlike, as a twenty year old I still honestly hold these wishful thoughts. Now on to my wings, Im going to be very particular about what they would look like. They wouldn't be like the glittery plastic ones we might wear when going to a fancy dress party. They would be Large and angelic and as white as snow. I was watching the modern adaptation of Romeo and Juiliet a week or so ago, above I've shown a photo from the party scene in the film I really love the wings she wears.

Checking out the channel four Ident.

Website design.

We were told to have a look at a few web designs.






In the recent lecture on tuesday which was to do with navigating our Identities we looked at company logos and channel idents which really intrigued me as this is where alot of my interests lie in this course. Before this lecture I never knew that the BMW logo was symbolic of a white propeller blade against a blue sky background, it reflects the origins of BMW as the maker of the military aircraft engines during the first world war. Now that I know the meaning of this logo, I want to find out more about other cooperate logos and their history.

V-side the beginning and diary of my new virtual life.

Finally Im on V-side. I encountered problems with second life so this is an alternative resort which was recommended by a friend and my tutor. Quite a fun start redesigning myself, didn't feel the need to change my hair colour etc, just my height. As ive always wanted to be a tad taller.


At first I didn't know what to do and just wondered around getting used to the action keys. Then after a short while I decided to start a conversation, I found it really strange interacting with complete strangers but it was rather amusing. I think I met a girl from New York called wanda, but then again how can we trust someone we don't know to be telling the truth. Talked firstly about music as you do on these virtual realities games lol. Then abit about New York as I went there this summer just gone. Quite embarrassing as she tried to show me around, and we were climbing on the roof tops but I couldn't jump as high as her, I kept trying but then the jump action button got stuck and I couldn't stop jumping. So in the end I Just logged off, oh dear what a great start. At least I had someone friendly to help me out seeing as it was my first time on the game.
I really enjoyed the music element to V-side and heard loads of great tunes. Ill be back on again tomorrow.

Before going back onto V-side again I thought It would be helpful to do a tutorial that was recommended on the V-side website. It was really good at familiarizing myself with the basics keys and to do's and not to do's of V-side. It showed me how I could change my profile photo and choose different poses and backgrounds. It taught me how to get rid of someone as a friend if they were to start bothering me. Hopefully I won't have to have that experience, however alot of my real life friends that also do Multimedia have complained about being hassled.
I also discovered that there are secret places hidden within V-side that you can find and explore. With this in mind I decided to revisit the sites and explore them more thoroughly than before. I found my self on a rooftop bar overlooking the sea which was actually really relaxing. Its easy to become absorbed in V-side and I wondered around for an hour or so stopping occassionly to take some notes.

Location- New Venezia North.
Had quite a repeated number of problems with my view option today, I think it got stuck and subsequently where ever I would move the mouse my gaze would follow and this also prevented me from being able to click on links and action buttons. Therefore I was forced to log out twice. Apart from these minor hickups I enjoyed discovering some other activities you can get up to, like being able to dance. I think I honestly went through all of the available moves, may have made a slight fool of my avatar but apart from that its really wicked.
Visited the All American Rejects apartment which was interesting as it had a information screen that provided links to relevent websites.

A while later I realised I was being followed by a young girl which strangely made me feel uncomfortable, even though its not real. I sat down in a bar and she came to talk to me and immediately asked "can you be my mommy" we can assume by their spelling that they're american. This strange approach threw me slighlty and I didn't know what to say apart from a big NO. Now I've experienced some of the stranger characters that use V-side it's put me off slightly as I don't particularly want to be chatting with them. I recently watched a story on the news about how paedophiles play out their sworded fantasies on second life, which is disturbing to know as It makes me feel vulnerable. The girl who spoke to me today claimed she was only 11 but who knows whether she was being truthful, as I was with my age. I don't like this whole virtual world where we aren't familiar with these friends we make

My recent attempt at socializing with other members of v-side failed misreably as noone seemed to respond. Which I thought was rather strange however I kept receiving friend requests off a few people.